SYSK's 12 Days of Christmas… Toys: Beanie Babies: Reigning Toy Craze Champion

The world has seen a lot of weird investment bubbles in its time, but few of them rival the fever that gripped the world in the 90s after Beanie Babies took off. Let’s visit this strange chapter in toy history together. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

• 0:04Josh Clark?

  Buy smart, drive for less and trade for more. That's Toyota Ford ability and it starts with a great deal on an off-road ready Tacoma or half ton Tundra, two of Toyota's longest lasting trucks, combining power for work, tech for adventures and style in between. And they're built on a reputation for quality and reliability, which is why Toyota trucks are known for holding their value, which could mean big savings when it's time for your next Toyota. So get a great deal today and a great value tomorrow. Shop toyota.com for more. Toyota, let's go places.

• 0:35Speaker 02

  Granger knows if you're a procurement manager at an industrial manufacturing facility, you're balancing inventory and budget while sourcing critical supplies across the operation. Too much inventory costs climb, too little, production slows. Granger's $2 billion in on hand inventory helps you get what you need, when you need it, so you can help keep budgets balanced and lines moving. Call 1-800-GRANGER, click Granger.com or just stop by. Granger, for the ones who get it done.

• 1:06Josh Clark?

  Hello again, guys. Up next on our playlist is our episode on Beanie Babies. They may have actually upstaged Cabbage Patch Kids because the craze for Beanie Babies stretched way beyond Christmas. There was a divorce case that saw the couple having to divide up their Beanie Babies on the floor of the courtroom. We talk about that, don't worry. Anyway, enjoy this episode on Beanie Babies.

• 1:32Speaker 03

  Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

• 1:42Josh Clark?

  Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, and we're feeling fairly festive. And this is Stuff You Should Know.

• 1:52Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 1:53Josh Clark?

  The episode before the Christmas episode.

• 1:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, which is a become a, I guess, tradition to do a classic toy. When did we start that?

• 2:04Josh Clark?

  I'd say more custom than tradition.

• 2:07Speaker 04

  All right.

• 2:10Josh Clark?

  I'm sorry.

• 2:11Speaker 04

  Christmas custom.

• 2:11Josh Clark?

  I'm feeling contrary. It is definitely a tradition.

• 2:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's because you're about to shut it down for a month. So you don't care. You're burning bridges.

• 2:19Josh Clark?

  Exactly. I won't see you until like 2024.

• 2:22Speaker 04

  Yeah, like Chuck will Chuck will forget anything that happens today by then.

• 2:26Josh Clark?

  I'm trying to think of when our first toy one was. It was a handful of years ago. I don't remember, but it was.

• 2:33Speaker 04

  Slinky, maybe?

• 2:34Josh Clark?

  No, no, I mean, we've done toy ones, just not around Christmas. I'm trying to think of the first toy Christmasy one. I can't. I'm drawing a blank right now. So this is like high quality podcasting we're doing right now.

• 2:48Speaker 04

  Well, good pick this year.

• 2:49Josh Clark?

  Yeah, thanks. I don't know what made me think of Beanie Babies, but I did. And I think it turned out to be a good one, too, because it had nothing to do with Christmas, really.

• 3:00Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:00Josh Clark?

  Christmas pops up at one part, but it's a toy and it's a really interesting toy because Beanie Babies, for those of you who don't know, if you were born after the 90s,

• 3:12Josh Clark?

  were probably, well, I'll just say the Financial Times called it potentially the greatest market bubble of all times.

• 3:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:23Josh Clark?

  I mean, that's, that's really saying something because there's been some market bubbles, but the Beanie Baby craze of the mid to late 90s probably topped them all. It was just that crazy. I mean, we've talked about some crazy stuff that people have done for toys before. People elbowing one another for a Cabbage Patch Kid. That's peanuts compared to what people did for Beanie Babies.

• 3:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, I didn't know anything about this either because that was sort of the end of college. And then my New York, New Jersey years and I just, I knew that Beanie Babies were a thing, but I was not participating

• 3:59Speaker 04

  in the economy in that way at that point.

• 4:01Josh Clark?

  So you didn't, you didn't own a single one?

• 4:03Speaker 04

  Oh, of course not.

• 4:04Josh Clark?

  I didn't either. No, I totally didn't. But the thing is, is we were in the minority. In America, something like sixty-two or sixty-three percent owned at least one Beanie Baby at the height of this, this bubble. Think about that.

• 4:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, that, that honestly was one of the most shocking stats in this whole thing.

• 4:21Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that's like six point three people out of every ten people.

• 4:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's amazing when you're talking about a little kid's toy.

• 4:31Josh Clark?

  Yeah, well, that was the thing. It wasn't kids that fueled this craze. It was almost exclusively adults because the reason the market bubble grew is because there became this idea that Beanie Babies were valuable, that they had an inherent value greater than the, the, the face value that you would pay for them at the retail store.

• 4:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, which was true for a while.

• 4:54Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it was, it was. We'll get into all that, but let's start from the beginning, shall we?

• 5:00Speaker 04

  All right, uh, well, you can't talk Beanie Babies without talking about the gentleman who started it all. Uh, I do remember seeing the letters TY on Beanie Baby packaging, so I wasn't completely head in the sand.

• 5:15Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 5:16Speaker 04

  Uh, but I did not know that TY was the guy's name. It was Ty Warner, who was born in the mid nineteen forties in La Grange, uh, Chicago suburb, La Grange, Illinois. And he had a pretty not great childhood, it seems like. Is that fair to say?

• 5:32Josh Clark?

  Yeah, from, from everything I've heard.

• 5:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, had a, had a mother who suffered from mental illness, which was not treated, which is even worse. Uh, had a, didn't have a great relationship with his dad. Uh, his parents got divorced when he was in his thirties, but he went to college at Kalamazoo, uh, college in Michigan, where he learned his love of treading the boards.

• 5:54Josh Clark?

  Uh, yeah, Cal, he, yeah, Kalamazoo.

• 5:57Speaker 04

  That means theater.

• 5:58Josh Clark?

  Right, exactly. But he did, he got into acting and it kind of, either he was already like a theater kid at heart, or it turned him into a theater kid because he ended up taking that, um... That way of living or that way of looking at the world or being in the world with him, essentially for the rest of his life.

• 6:17Speaker 04

  Yeah, he seemed fairly flamboyant.

• 6:20Josh Clark?

  He was flamboyant. There's a really off sighted story about him showing up when he became a salesman for the toy company that his father worked for. He would show up to these sales calls in a Rolls Royce, wearing a floor-length fur coat and a cane and a hat.

• 6:39Speaker 04

  Amazing.

• 6:40Josh Clark?

  Essentially like Kramer when he accidentally is wearing the Technicolor Dream Coat and ends up with that big Jamiroquai hat and a cane.

• 6:48Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 6:48Josh Clark?

  That's essentially what Ty Warner showed up to these, these sales meetings looking like in the early 60s. And apparently it worked because he said that, um, his premise was if he showed up to a sales meeting looking like that, people would say, I want to see what's in that guy's briefcase.

• 7:06Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 7:08Speaker 04

  Or do you?

• 7:09Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it depends on the kind of party you're in for.

• 7:12Speaker 04

  Uh, yeah, he was a really good salesperson, apparently. Um, he thought a lot of himself, though. And in 1980, uh, he worked for this company, I guess, what, for like 18 years? Cause he got the job in 1962. So that's a nice, long run, but, uh, his, at least the way his former boss told it, guy named Harold Nazamian, who was the CEO, basically accused him of, um, moonlighting on the company and using their, you know, sales list and his personal, uh, personal relationships with people as a salesperson to sell his own stuff while he was working.

• 7:49Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 7:50Speaker 04

  Uh, as a sales manager for this company. And so he got fired.

• 7:53Josh Clark?

  Yeah. On those sales calls, he would be like, yeah, I've got these great, uh, Dakin products, but also I want to show you these too. So he was not only using company context, he was using company time too. It's about as bad a thing you can do as a, as a salesman, essentially.

• 8:07Speaker 04

  Yeah. And it wasn't long after that that the Beanie Baby came along?

• 8:11Josh Clark?

  No, um, that was, so it was 1980 when he lost the job. He apparently moved to Rome. He went to go visit some friends and ended up living there for a few years. And, um, when he came back, he was inspired to, to keep, um, going in the toy industry. I guess it kind of got under his skin and he'd seen some toy cats there in Rome, he said. And he was inspired to create not Beanie Babies at first, but his first plush toys, which was a line of cats laying down, um, pretty fluffy. They looked, they were fully stuffed, which is a big difference between them and Beanie Babies. And then for every cat, um, there was a Himalayan version of it.

• 8:54Josh Clark?

  Uh, and they were pretty cute little cats, but the thing that he did that I think really kind of helped sell these things, because they were like a modest success, I've seen it described as, um, that he gave them names. They were, they weren't just some stuffed cat. This was Smokey. This was Peaches. Like these, these cats were individuals. They, they had an identity and that made them that much more lovable.

• 9:18Speaker 04

  Yeah. And they were larger. They were about 17 inches. They, uh, larger than Beanie Babies would be. Uh, they would cost more than Beanie Babies at 20 bucks. And like you said, they were stuffed, but not stuffed with the, uh, you know, kind of genius of the, I don't know about genius. That's probably stretching that word.

• 9:34Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 9:36Speaker 04

  Let's just say the fairly smart thing that he did with Beanie Babies, uh, was he stuffed them with, with beads, like, uh, like, uh, what's it called?

• 9:44Josh Clark?

  PVC pellets.

• 9:45Speaker 04

  Beanbag chair.

• 9:46Josh Clark?

  Yeah, pretty much.

• 9:48Speaker 04

  Uh, and didn't over stuff it. So you could move them around and pose them and they could, you know, droop over your shoulder and stuff like that. Not like a regular sort of fully stuffed, um, whatever they stuffed those things with, whatever weird, uh, chemical, um, stuffing.

• 10:03Josh Clark?

  Oh, like the little Styrofoam pellets or the?

• 10:06Speaker 04

  I don't know what's in those things.

• 10:07Josh Clark?

  Styrofoam fiber. It's kind of like a. Yeah, fibers.

• 10:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, those are the, those were the cheapest ones that you would get as like a prize at an amusement park.

• 10:16Josh Clark?

  Yes.

• 10:17Speaker 04

  That had literal styrofoam balls.

• 10:20Josh Clark?

  Right, and that was a big, that was a big deal about his Beanie Babies because they were high quality. They were very well made. From the outset, he was all up the bottom of the South Korean manufacturers he had partnered with to make these things. He was really involved in the design and manufacturing process. So these were really high quality dolls. But he made a very conscious decision to sell Beanie Babies at five bucks a pop, which he said that that was the, he, uh, kids could typically buy that with their allowance money because as we'll forget multiple times throughout this episode, these were originally meant for kids to buy, the Beanie Babies were. So that was a really big deal because he came out,

• 11:05Josh Clark?

  he was one of the first people to come out with a high quality toy at a price point of something you would get at like the county fair or something as a prize. But instead it was a good, good quality plush toy.

• 11:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly. And so this was 1993 for the actual launch of the Beanie Baby, uh, which launched with Brownie the Bear.

• 11:25Josh Clark?

  Yep.

• 11:26Speaker 04

  And Pinter's the Lobster. And like a Cabbage Patch Kid, it came with a date of birth. He, he used the name like he, you know, originally did with those, uh, fully stuffed cats or kitties. I guess fully stuffed cats sounds gross.

• 11:40Josh Clark?

  It's like a turducken.

• 11:42Speaker 04

  Including the date of birth and then also another key was this little short poem and their little heart shaped tag. Turned out to be a bit of marketing genius. It was just, just an extra little something to make it different to appeal to a kid. Because you gotta, e- even if it ended up being a thing that adults tried to collect because, uh, you know, they thought it was valuable. It never would have gotten there if he hadn't have made a toy that kids really loved to begin with.

• 12:07Josh Clark?

  Right. Um, also, I mean, he wasn't the first to do that. This was a good 10 years after the Cabbage Patch Kids and their adoption papers and all that stuff. But it's still, it is a good marketing technique for sure, and it did work. But the thing that made Beanie Babies really kind of take off was multifold. Part of it was his marketing scheme.

• 12:29Josh Clark?

  He had a really brilliant idea, which was only certain kinds of stores could carry Beanie Babies. And you actually had to be a licensed Beanie Baby retailer to sell Beanie Babies legally or legitimately. And those stores were like Hallmark stores, locally owned gift stores, hospital gift shops, like small stores. So that, right off the bat, canceled any chance of anyone, I saw it described it, going into like a big box store, like a Walmart or something, and seeing a bargain bin of Beanie Babies just lumped together for 50% off. So the fact that that didn't, that that possibility didn't exist, someone couldn't see that, automatically made it.

• 13:14Josh Clark?

  They were just higher status than they otherwise would have been. Because he had, he made enough to sell to huge retailers like that. He's, he decided deliberately not to do that for that reason.

• 13:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, super smart. I mean, if you can create a scarcity and the illusion that what you're peddling is like limited and collectible.

• 13:37Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 13:37Speaker 04

  Then you're gonna do pretty well, and that's what he did. But not only by limiting the amount of stores that could be sold in, but he also limited the number of toys that these stores could even buy. Like that Hallmark store, once they, you know, really took off, couldn't be like, hey, we're gonna dedicate half our store to these things now, because they're selling like hotcakes.

• 13:56Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 13:57Speaker 04

  So he would dole them out in limited numbers to the stores. And each of those stores only had certain products, like, you know, you might have Spot the Dog and Squealer the Pig at one store, or Chocolate the Moose and Flash the Dolphin at another. And that creates a situation then where kids are like, oh, I gotta, you know, like, completing the collection is a classic kids' toy scam.

• 14:24Josh Clark?

  For sure. Yeah.

• 14:25Speaker 04

  To get kids to buy all the things.

• 14:27Josh Clark?

  Exactly. And so you would have to go around town to multiple stores in your town to get the ones that were available. And because they were allowed to only buy limited amounts, frequently those things were sold out. So the idea that these things were scarce collectors items was manufactured out of the gate by Ty Warner and his marketing. I almost said scam, but scheme, I think is a better way to put it.

• 14:54Speaker 04

  Yeah. The other big thing is that this coincided with the rise of the internet. There's a great scene in the movie. There's a movie that's out now, I think an Apple original called The Beanie Bubble?

• 15:09Josh Clark?

  Yeah. I haven't seen it. Did you watch it?

• 15:11Speaker 04

  No, the reviews aren't kind. I may watch it because I love Zach Galifianakis, who plays Ty Warner and Elizabeth Banks is in the movie as a sort of a thinly veiled version of his former business partner and romantic partner, I think Patricia Roach. But in the movie, in the trailer I saw today, Zach said, because you know, they started a website and they were, you know, an early website in those years.

• 15:38Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 15:39Speaker 04

  Zach Galifianakis, or I guess Ty Warner says, "We broke the internet thing."

• 15:45Speaker 04

  Which I thought was a pretty good line because the internet was so new. Everyone was like, I guess, you know, this is a thing.

• 15:50Josh Clark?

  Yeah, apparently. So he had an employee named Lena Trevetti and she was a coder. And this is like 1993, 94. And she convinced Ty Warner to create a Beanie Babies website because they were getting calls and letters and stuff like that from people saying like, "This is my checklist. Is this accurate? Am I missing any?" And they thought, well, let's just put like a central place where all of the Beanie Babies can be listed and it can be a place where everybody who likes Beanie Babies can come and like learn and get excited about Beanie Babies and buy Beanie Babies. Because starting in 1995, they started selling Beanie Babies on this website. And that was the same year that Amazon and eBay launched. So they were one of the first e-commerce sites on the internet, too.

• 16:35Speaker 04

  Yeah, which is amazing. The movie has a character named Maya, who was, again, a thinly veiled version of Lena Trevi, which I'm curious why they didn't just use their real names.

• 16:46Josh Clark?

  They touted this as loosely based on Zach Bissonette's book, and that some of it was fictitious, I think, to keep from getting sued. I get the impression that Ty Warner is not shy about suing people.

• 17:05Speaker 04

  Well, which is interesting, because he played Ty Warner in the movie. Like, that's the only name that wasn't changed.

• 17:09Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I don't know why they did it, but they definitely did it.

• 17:14Speaker 04

  Well, judging from the trailer, it seems that both the Banks character and the Maya character are kind of one of the threads of the movies, as it was seemingly in real life, was that there were at least a couple of women in the organization that had a lot to do with their growth. And the sort of story is that he never gave them enough credit, and that seems to play out in the movie.

• 17:36Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah. If you read any corporate write-ups, like press releases, or the very rare interviews he's given, it sounds like the whole thing was just him. Just him. And in part, it was largely him, because he owned the company from the outset, always has. He's never sold one share. He didn't take it public. It's been a privately owned company by him 100% as far as I know, from the outset. So he definitely, you know, really was the driving force in this. But he had help that is largely unacknowledged publicly. It's a good thing that Zach Bissonette came along, and also the people who made that movie based on Zach Bissonette's book, to kind of shine a spotlight on the other people,

• 18:22Josh Clark?

  particularly women who helped him.

• 18:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, Zach and Zach.

• 18:27Josh Clark?

  That's right. The two Zachs on the Zach attack against Ty Warner.

• 18:31Speaker 04

  That's right. The other thing that he did to sort of, you know, drive this... I mean, I guess we can call it a false scarcity is he had, he was very secret about the company. He didn't want people outside the company knowing like when they were gonna launch a new kind of toy, how many they were making.

• 18:50Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 18:51Speaker 04

  In 1995, he started retiring models.

• 18:54Josh Clark?

  That was huge.

• 18:54Speaker 04

  And then adding other ones and he would just all of a sudden drop like, you know, this Marty Moose, what did I call him? Something the Moose.

• 19:01Josh Clark?

  Chocolate Moose.

• 19:03Speaker 04

  Chocolate Moose is gone, let's say. And, and if there are Beanie Baby people out there, like, no, Chocolate Moose never left. I'm just using that as an example.

• 19:11Josh Clark?

  That's a good idea.

• 19:12Speaker 04

  But they would just announce that on the website and all of a sudden people are like, oh my God, they've retired the Moose. And, you know, people are driving around and trying to find them in those stores before they're all gone.

• 19:22Josh Clark?

  Yeah. That was a, that was a deliberate thing to do as well to create the further scarcity, like legitimate scarcity. But apparently he fell into that backwards, or he stumbled into it because we said that he was really involved in the design. After these things would launch, he would like see one and be like, that's too orange. I want it more red. And now all of a sudden I saw Pinchy the Lobster would be a much deeper red. Well, they'd stop producing the orangish red one and these Beanie Baby collectors would go bonkers trying to find the other one. He started to notice that. And so he created real scarcity by deliberately retiring some just out of the blue. People would go scramble to find them and then retailers,

• 20:06Josh Clark?

  most importantly, would start stockpiling everything that he had that they could sell, say, the orange Pinchy.

• 20:14Speaker 04

  Yeah. He was also smart enough to, to realize that the Cabbage Patch Kids, like when they, when that bubble burst, it just kind of all went away. And so he would do things like, hey, Hallmark, if you want to order these Beanie Babies, you gotta also order some of this other stuff that I'm selling. It's not as nearly as popular, but he tried to increase revenue sort of across the company. So he wasn't all in on the Beanie Baby.

• 20:39Josh Clark?

  You're right. I say we take a break and come back and talk about how McDonald's factors into this. What do you think?

• 20:46Speaker 04

  Make what?

• 20:47Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 21:17Speaker 05

  Hey, this is Mario Lopez from all Mario Lopez Daily Podcast. Buy smart, drive for less and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability. And it starts with a great deal on an all wheel drive Camry, Corolla Cross, or a Corolla sedan with the latest features in tech. Or test drive a spacious Grand Highlander or adventure-ready RAV4. And with so many hybrid models available, you can enjoy longer trips without all the stops. While Toyota's legendary resale value means you could get more at traded. So get a great deal today and great value tomorrow. Shop toyota.com for deals and details. Toyota, let's go places.

• 21:58Speaker 06

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 22:13Speaker 07

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant. So I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 22:24Speaker 06

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone. One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies. So join us and hear their stories and more. Because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.

• 23:07Josh Clark?

  Okay Chuck, so we said McDonald's factors into this. Like any great American economic bubble story, McDonald's is gonna play some role in it whatsoever, somehow, some way. And McDonald's is the one that basically said, if you are just kinda out there on the margins and don't really know what's going on in this Beanie Baby collector world, growing under your very nose, this McDonald's Happy Meal promotion is going to just blow the doors off of any illusions that Beanie Babies are not a cultural force to be reckoned with.

• 23:40Speaker 04

  Yeah, over a couple of years, I think they had two versions in 97 and 98, where they, there were hundreds of millions of teeny babies, these were even smaller, obviously, because it was, you know, to fit into a Happy Meal.

• 23:54Josh Clark?

  Yeah, teeny beanies.

• 23:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, what did I say, teeny babies?

• 23:57Josh Clark?

  It works too.

• 23:58Speaker 04

  I like teeny babies.

• 23:59Josh Clark?

  I like teeny babies too.

• 24:01Speaker 04

  Teeny beanies. And, you know, even if your thing is already popular, all of a sudden, if hundreds of millions of these things are going out in Happy Meals, and, you know, the most popular, you know, fast food restaurant chain in the world, then it's gonna just skyrocket this thing even further, and that's exactly what it did.

• 24:19Josh Clark?

  Yeah, the 1998 one, the second one that they did where you could get teeny beanies in a Happy Meal, the first weekend of that promotion, McDonald's saw the, the highest increase in sales in its corporate history. It had never sold more in any weekend in the history of McDonald's than it did for, at the beginning of that second Beanie Babies promotion. And people were ordering as many Happy Meals as they were allowed to order and telling the McDonald's workers, just keep the food, I just want the Beanie Babies. McDonald's had to set up rules, like individual franchises had their own rules, it was really patchwork, where- You could say get five Happy Meals per order or per visit and you had to have a

• 25:03Josh Clark?

  two hour waiting period in between visits. So people would like just go from McDonald's to McDonald's and then just go on like a circuit to get as many of the Beanie Babies as they possibly could. People were tackling like delivery people showing up with the boxes of the new Beanie Babies. It was nuts what people did just for the McDonald's version of the Beanie Babies.

• 25:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, that McDonald's record, that even counts passing the Great McRib Feast of 92, the previous record holder.

• 25:34Josh Clark?

  The McRib's back right now, I saw. I've been meaning to go get one.

• 25:38Speaker 04

  Talk about false scarcity.

• 25:40Josh Clark?

  Yeah, same thing, for sure. I mean.

• 25:42Speaker 04

  I mean, they could put that on their menu at any time, right?

• 25:44Josh Clark?

  Totally, for sure. You know that the fat cats at McDonald's corporate are eating McRibs every day of the year.

• 25:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 25:52Speaker 04

  And the employee lounge is just stocked with them.

• 25:54Josh Clark?

  Right. But all this that's going on Chuck is, is, it underscores a larger cultural thing and that is that people are buying these Beanie Babies, not just because they think they're the cutest thing on two legs, but because it has become largely widely accepted that they are a sound investment. If you want to diversify your portfolio or more often was the case, make your entire portfolio just Beanie Babies.

• 26:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, you know, this was by the, like you said, the Cabbage Patch Kids that already come and gone. Everyone has already known at this point about the, you know, Star Wars collectibles and baseball cards and trading cards. So the idea, I think there are certain people out there after all those things happened that are always sort of looking for that next thing as a, you know, sort of alternative investment. If I can, you know, buy 50 Beanie Babies and put them in a box and just sit on them and that'll put my kids through college one day.

• 26:55Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 26:56Speaker 04

  And that's, you know, a lot of people did stuff like that. I think you mentioned eBay had launched very soon afterward. They launched in 95 and in 1997, this is the other most staggering stat of the show to me. 6% of all of eBay was Beanie Baby sales.

• 27:14Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Isn't that nuts? So the secondary market really did grow up and there really was like a huge market for Beanie Babies that say have been retired and one that you had bought for $5 and kept in the package, you could sell for hundreds of dollars on eBay legitimately in the mid to late 90s.

• 27:36Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 27:37Josh Clark?

  So this really was happening. Like it wasn't like everybody was just hoping beyond hope that their Beanie Babies were going to increase in value. They were increasing value before their very eyes. So people who weren't sucked into it were like, this is the dumbest thing I've ever seen. And if there's ever been an economic bubble, this is it. And yet people were buying these things for like long-term investing. They were buying them, hanging on to them for 20 years or 30 years from now. The people who were actually trading in the moment are the ones who might have made money off of it. But that's pretty much the only people who did.

• 28:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, for sure. It also created a sort of an industry around it. You found some examples of people that made a lot of money just in the ancillary Beanie Baby market by doing things like writing books about stuff. This woman Peggy Gallagher, she was a paralegal. She made 200 grand on a book that she self-published called The Beanie Baby Phenomenon and then started making, I imagine, a pretty good deal of money as an official, well, not official, but as just an experienced Beanie Authenticator. Another woman named Mary Beth Soboluski, she was an IBM Systems Engineer and she

• 28:53Speaker 04

  just made sort of the go-to list, like the Bible basically of Beanie Baby pricing and made a lot of money off that and also started putting out a magazine.

• 29:06Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 29:06Speaker 04

  Was it a monthly?

• 29:08Josh Clark?

  Yes, it was based around the price list. Like, did you ever collect or read Beckett's monthly for baseball cards? It's just a big price list.

• 29:15Speaker 04

  I knew about it.

• 29:15Josh Clark?

  Okay, it was basically that, but for Beanie Babies. It's called Mary Beth's Beanbag World. They sold 650,000 copies a month at its peak for six bucks a pop. So that's almost $3 million a run per issue. For Beanie Babies price guides, right? But she really went to town with it. It wasn't, it wasn't, you know, just based on nothing. They, she and her, her assistants like called dealers, Beanie Baby dealers to find out what their prices were, what was selling really fast.

• 29:43Speaker 04

  What you got?

• 29:44Josh Clark?

  They were, right. They were following eBay prices like they were. It was a legitimate, um, Olivia put it was the gold standard price list for a reason.

• 29:54Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 29:54Josh Clark?

  You know? So, um, and Mary Beth Soboluski is, um, another woman who is, uh, often overlooked for the contribution she made to the Beanie Baby mania. Because in addition to creating the gold standard price list, she was one of the original, um, self-described, uh, Chicago suburban soccer moms who started trading Beanie Babies in the first place. And apparently their fervor in trading Beanie Babies in suburban Chicago actually kicked off the national trend of collecting and trading Beanie Babies. And, and they essentially created the secondary market. There's an HBO documentary a couple of years ago, I think, called Beanie, Beanie Mania, that really does a good job

• 30:38Josh Clark?

  of shining a light on, on them and their role and contribution to the whole thing, too.

• 30:43Speaker 04

  So we've had a documentary, now a feature film.

• 30:48Josh Clark?

  Yes.

• 30:48Speaker 04

  Broadway?

• 30:50Josh Clark?

  Broadway's next. And then, uh, James Michener is coming back to life to write an epic novel about it.

• 30:57Speaker 04

  That'd be pretty amazing. Uh, speaking of amazing, there are also some amazing stories about, uh, just how kind of crazy things got, uh, in, in many different ways. Um, one of which is a 1999 divorce case in Las Vegas, where, uh, this couple was, was divorcing and they had a lot of combined assets in the form of Beanie Babies that they thought, you know, were worth a lot. And they may have been worth a lot of money, their collection. Uh, and they, there's a very great picture. If you look it up on the internet, just type in, you know, like Vegas Beanie Baby divorced couple. And they brought all these Beanie Babies in on the floor. And the judge said, like, like choosing a team at recess.

• 31:39Speaker 04

  You just go one at a time and each of you pick out a Beanie Baby that you're gonna keep for yourself. And it's just a very kind of funny looking photo.

• 31:46Josh Clark?

  It is, until you read like some of the quotes from the woman involved in the divorce case, the wife. Who was like this, it was really, you know, demoralizing and degrading to have, to be forced to do that. She was really upset that the judge made her and her ex-husband do that, but it.

• 32:06Speaker 04

  Really?

• 32:06Josh Clark?

  Yeah, she was. She was not happy about it at all. But it was like, the whole thing was worth five grand, I think they said, but that was five grand at the time. And people were speculating on Beanie Babies, so the thing could have been worth a million dollars, that pile of Beanie Babies, which is why they went to the trouble of selecting them like that one at a time.

• 32:25Speaker 04

  I don't know. I mean, I guess everyone's entitled to their own opinion. It's her life, but degrading.

• 32:31Josh Clark?

  I don't think she used the word degrading, but it was, it was along those lines. I'm paraphrasing.

• 32:36Speaker 04

  Okay. I would have felt more silly unless he like tied them both up and made them do it with their mouth or something. That's degrading.

• 32:44Josh Clark?

  Yeah. No, the, if, when they picked a Beanie Baby, they had to pick it up with their chin and hand it to their ex. To say whether it was okay if they kept it or not, and then they had to hand it back, all without using their hands.

• 32:55Speaker 04

  Right. What was the thing you do where you would pass a, something with your neck?

• 33:00Josh Clark?

  That's what I'm talking about.

• 33:02Speaker 04

  Oh, okay.

• 33:02Josh Clark?

  They, they did that, but with the Beanie Babies they selected.

• 33:05Speaker 04

  Okay. What did people used to pass though?

• 33:07Josh Clark?

  Like an orange, I think is what it was.

• 33:09Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right.

• 33:10Josh Clark?

  I can't remember what movie.

• 33:11Speaker 04

  When you're a kid, it's, I think the whole point of that game was like, ooh, look how close we are.

• 33:15Josh Clark?

  Exactly.

• 33:16Speaker 04

  Right.

• 33:17Josh Clark?

  It was like, um, spin the bottle, but with an orange and necks and chins.

• 33:22Speaker 04

  No bottle.

• 33:23Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 33:25Speaker 04

  There was a guy in California named Chris Robinson, senior. I don't think any relation to the, the other Chris Robinson. And he bought 20,000 Beanie Babies, not $20,000 worth, 20,000 actual Beanie Babies, spending a hundred grand or so. And he was one of those guys that was like, this is gonna put my five kids through college one day. And one of his kids, Chris Jr. of the Black Crows, I guess, made a documentary called Bankrupt to Buy Beanies about like, I guess, how dumb he thought his dad was for spending that much money, like emptying their bank account because he thought it was a good investment.

• 34:03Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it's like, it's a very short documentary. It's like eight to 12 minutes. I can't remember which one. And it's mostly, it's just him interviewing his family members about this period in their family's history.

• 34:12Speaker 04

  Dead dumb, yeah.

• 34:14Josh Clark?

  It was like, the dad is definitely like, you know, it was not a good idea, but he's still holding out hope that, you know, at some point, sometime down the road, oh yeah, they still have them. Like they're the background in all of the, the shots, like the interviews. It's pretty, it's cute. It's not like, you know, condemnation or anything like that, but it's just, it's, it's worth the eight to 12 minutes that you'll spend watching it, I think.

• 34:42Speaker 04

  All right, I'll have to go check that out.

• 34:44Josh Clark?

  The dad's like, this documentary is very degrading.

• 34:46Speaker 04

  Right.

• 34:47Josh Clark?

  I'm paraphrasing.

• 34:49Speaker 04

  There were a lot of cases, you know, there were people indicted in court for counterfeiting these things, you know, POs that were never delivered and distributors kept the money. The craze was so bad, there was actual crime, like people breaking in and stealing Beanie Babies. This one case of a 77-year-old guy in Chicago named Ben Perry was charged with stealing close to 1,300 Beanie Babies. There was a PI that found him, a Thai Incorporated private eye, in fact, they found him moving stuff out of a storage locker, moving these toys in and out. And I'm not sure, like, he said that they weren't stolen, yet he

• 35:31Speaker 04

  gave them up and donated them to a charity. Like, that seems very fishy to me.

• 35:36Josh Clark?

  He apparently bought them for dirt cheap at a produce market, like a farmer's market. And he swore he didn't know that they were stolen, even though they were in boxes labeled Thai, like they were shipping boxes stolen out of the warehouse. But he got off finally, but it became clear to him that he, he didn't steal them, but that they were stolen. So he just, you know, donated them.

• 35:59Speaker 04

  So he didn't get in trouble?

• 36:00Josh Clark?

  No, but apparently he loved all of the limelight that was cast on him by the press during this, this, um, the time that he was in court as the Beanie Baby Bandit. He apparently ate it up. So he got something out of it.

• 36:13Speaker 04

  He's 77. He's like, I'm going out in style.

• 36:16Josh Clark?

  Exactly. Uh, there was another one. A murder is frequently linked to Beanie Babies, even though it's kind of a stretch if you start to scratch beneath the surface, but um, a man named Jeffrey White murdered, uh, another man, Harry Simmons in West Virginia,

• 36:33Josh Clark?

  supposedly over a dispute over who owned some Beanie Babies. Although really what happened was Harry Simmons and Jeffrey White used to work together and I think Jeffrey White was stealing or loafing or something like that. And Harry Simmons got him fired. So Jeffrey White, who had borrowed Beanie Babies from him and hadn't given them back, killed Harry Simmons.

• 36:53Speaker 04

  We understand you've been loafing.

• 36:56Josh Clark?

  Exactly. Is that true?

• 36:59Speaker 04

  Uh, yeah. Is that a crime?

• 37:01Josh Clark?

  If you got time to lean, you got time to clean, son.

• 37:04Speaker 04

  Oh, man. Uh, should we take a break on that note?

• 37:08Josh Clark?

  Yeah, sure.

• 37:09Speaker 04

  All right. We'll be right back and wrap up the story of the Beanie Baby.

• 37:13Speaker 07

  Lately, I've been learning some stuff about insomnia or aluminia. Um, how about the one on borderline disorder? Better yet, birth order. Heard that one before, but it was so nice. I learned it twice. Everybody listen up. Oh, it's Charles and Joshua. It's tough. It's tough. It's tough. You should know. This is Jason Timp from Hoops Tonight with Jason Timp. Buy smart, drive for less and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability.

• 37:54Speaker 05

  And it starts with a great deal on an off-road ready Tacoma or half ton Tundra, two of Toyota's longest lasting trucks, combining power for work, tech for adventures, and style in between. Built on a reputation for quality and reliability, Toyota trucks are known for holding their value, which can mean big savings when it's time for your next Toyota. So get a great deal today and great value tomorrow. Shop toyota.com for more. Toyota, let's go places.

• 38:18Speaker 06

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 38:33Speaker 05

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic, in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 38:44Speaker 06

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 38:49Speaker 07

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 38:55Speaker 06

  So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat, it's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart radio app today.

• 39:28Speaker 04

  All right, we call this a bubble, like any sort of collectible or real estate bubble or financial bubble, because they eventually burst. And the Beanie Baby really followed the, I was about to say rise and fall of the internet, the internet clearly clearly never fell. It survived. But the big dot com boom was what what helped the Beanie Baby along and also helped kill it a little bit. Although, you know, Beanie Babies were bound to, I think they were bound to go away one way or another anytime it's something like this. August 1999. The website said, or stop, we're stopping the operation.

• 40:08Speaker 04

  We're not going to make any more of these, at this point, 325 different Beanie Babies at the end of the year. Some people thought, no, this is, we know that Ty guy by now, this is just a stunt to get people to buy more of his stuff. But it, you know, it kind of worked because enthusiasts and collectors were like, all right, this is our last chance to go and get what's out there to complete, to complete our collections.

• 40:31Josh Clark?

  Right. I didn't read the books, Ekbesanet's book, but I read a review of it, that they, they mentioned the way that he puts it. This was, this was in fact 100% a stunt to kind of juice the Beanie, the Beanie, the Beanie Baby market again.

• 40:49Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 40:50Josh Clark?

  And it did work, but in the short term, and he basically says Ty Warner killed his, his creation by, by carrying out this stunt. Because on Christmas Eve, here's where Christmas pops up, as we said at the beginning. Christmas Eve, 1999, right before the turn of the millennium, or no, I guess that was a year later. He said, Ty Warner announced on the website, I changed my mind, I'll leave it up to you guys to vote whether we should keep making Beanie Babies or not. And in his credit, you had to, you had to pay 50 cents to vote, but each 50 cent vote went to the Elizabeth Glazer, Glazer Pediatric AIDS Foundation.

• 41:31Josh Clark?

  So that was something, but 91% of people said, yes, we want to keep Beanie Babies going.

• 41:38Speaker 04

  Of course he did.

• 41:39Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And the company said, oh, that's great. We just so happen to have a whole new line of them ready to go. So here you go, everybody, Beanie Babies for all. And it was met with some craziness, but, but nothing like it used to be. And very shortly after that, the whole thing started to fizzle out rather quickly.

• 41:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, it seemed like the sort of the last hurrah. I don't know if Ty Warner like saw the writing on the wall and wanted one more sort of big sales crunch.

• 42:10Speaker 04

  I mean, if that's how he planned it, then that was pretty smart because that's, you know, that's what happened. They had a huge sales jump. Even though brief, they sold about $800 million in 2000. I mean, that's seven years later.

• 42:24Speaker 04

  I think Beanie Babies lasted a lot longer than I would have expected them to. It seems to me like it would have been like a two-year flash in the pan, but they were around for a while.

• 42:34Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I saw that they were still going until about 2002. So that's, yeah, that's a good long, almost a decade of a craze, of a bubble. And but but at the end of it all, people started to realize like, oh, wait a minute. Everybody has these things, this this clubby bear that I had to pay for the privilege of buying to be part of the club. Everybody has that. Or everyone has the Princess Di Beanie Baby Bear, the special limited edition Beanie Baby they released in honor of Princess Di after she died. They made it sound like this was like the scariest Beanie Baby yet. There were, there's like 100 million of them out there. So people started to realize like, these things aren't aren't scarce at all.

• 43:18Josh Clark?

  There's a glut of them. And these thousands and thousands of dollars worth of Beanie Babies that I have set aside are worthless. And that was a huge blow to a lot of people. At the same time, I think it was also freeing because you it's you'll just come across stories of people who'd basically spent all of their free time tracking down Beanie Babies. It was an obsession that they couldn't quit. And so they were they were out a bunch of money and time and wasted years, but they were free finally when the market finally crashed.

• 43:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's like Bitcoin.

• 43:56Josh Clark?

  I've seen it. I've seen it very closely compared to Bitcoin in at least one article.

• 44:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, I know people who are sort of obsessively hours and hours a day trading cryptocurrency. And it's it seems exhausting to me.

• 44:13Josh Clark?

  And it's the same thing. If you ever see a bubble coming along, that's not a long-term thing. If something suddenly just jumps in value and it's shocking and people are writing like crazy articles about it, buy it and then sell it during that. Don't hang on to it long term. Same thing with Bitcoin. Like, a lot of people made a lot of money by buying Bitcoin cheap and then selling it at its peak. It's people who hung on to it as a long-term investment that are now like, I lost my shirt, you know?

• 44:41Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 44:42Josh Clark?

  So it's the same thing with Beanie Babies. It's the same thing with any economic bubble. You have to know when to get out at just the right time. Or you can sit on the sidelines and be like, you guys are chumps.

• 44:51Speaker 04

  Right. Well, who certainly wasn't a chump was Ty because he, and I feel like I can just call him Ty because that was so his brand, T Y.

• 45:01Josh Clark?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 45:02Speaker 04

  No one knows exactly what kind of dough he made on these because, like you said earlier, he never, you know, became a, he never launched an IPO and didn't have to disclose stuff publicly, but he is and was a man with some ego because in 1998, there were some questions about, you know, Beanie Babies, did they really sell as much? Was it the top toy seller in the world? And he himself took out a full page Wall Street Journal ad saying that he made $700 million in profits in 1997 alone, which is, I don't know if that number's true, but if it's 700 million just in profits in one year, then that's remarkable.

• 45:43Josh Clark?

  That would have made Ty, Inc. more profitable than Hasbro and Mattel together that year. This is just from-

• 45:51Speaker 04

  For everything they sold.

• 45:52Josh Clark?

  Exactly. Just in profits, right? That's what, taking out that ad in the Wall Street Journal is what you'd call today a flex. Flex.

• 46:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, but I mean, he is still a legit billionaire. It's sort of gone up and down according to Forbes as far as his net worth goes. 2002 supposedly at 6 billion, 2009 down to 3.2, 2023 Forbes says he's worth about 5.7, but it's, you know, he still has that company, but he also diversified, got into real estate, notably as a hotelier, and he owns the, I think, still closed Four Seasons Hotel, New York.

• 46:33Josh Clark?

  Still closed? What's it closed for?

• 46:36Speaker 04

  Uh, it depends on who you ask. I think he claimed it was renovations, but other people said it was a dispute with the Four Seasons brand, but I think it's supposed to reopen in sometime next year.

• 46:49Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I saw he had a dispute with the Four Seasons brand over upkeep fees, like what he basically needed to spend to keep the thing up to Four Seasons standards.

• 46:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 46:58Josh Clark?

  I also saw that that was the first hotel to open to first responders and doctors and nurses who were working on the front lines of the COVID pandemic so that they they had a place to stay. It wouldn't have to go home and infect their families, which I thought was pretty cool.

• 47:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, I guess we can talk about that a little bit in a broader sense because Warner is someone who like has has been notably charitable as far as like front facing sort of putting stuff out there kind of stuff like the Elizabeth Glazer Pediatric AIDS Foundation.

• 47:35Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 47:35Speaker 04

  When he donated, you know, the 50 cents for those votes and stuff like that because he got in trouble at one point for for tax, well, not tax fraud, but what do you call it? Tax evasion. And as part of his sentence, one of which was a couple of years probation, 500 hours of community service and $100,000 fine on the criminal side. He paid over $53 million in civil penalties. But part of the argument was like, hey, you know, as far as this defense goes, like this guy's really charitable. He's donated millions of dollars to the Children's Hunger Fund and the Andre Agassi Foundation. And like I said, a lot of really public facing, like large donations, but prosecutors are

• 48:18Speaker 04

  like, that's a pittance of what this guy's worth.

• 48:21Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 48:22Speaker 04

  And just because he gives a little bit of money and makes a big deal about it doesn't mean he didn't break the law.

• 48:26Josh Clark?

  Yeah, the judge in the case, though, was like, yeah, he did. But again, I'm pretty impressed with his charitable work. So he got off easy. He could have gone to prison for four years. Instead, he got off with $100,000 fine, 500 hours of community service and two years probation. And it was for just the dumbest thing. He had a Swiss bank account that no one knew about but him that had like $100 million in it. This guy was a billionaire three times over at his poorest point. There's just no reason to have done that. And he did, and he got caught doing it. And so he he called it the greatest mistake of his life.

• 49:05Speaker 04

  Besides.

• 49:07Josh Clark?

  Besides that pump and dump scheme at the turn of the millennium.

• 49:11Speaker 04

  So they kept making stuff, Stuffy's in fact, as a company in 2004, they started licensing deals or getting involved with licensing other people's stuff like Garfield and some Disney stuff. There was something called Beanie Booze that came out in 2009.

• 49:29Josh Clark?

  Those were kind of big.

• 49:30Speaker 04

  That were, yeah, they did. Okay. I mean, nothing, obviously, wouldn't like the Beanie Baby, but nothing ever has probably.

• 49:36Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 49:37Speaker 04

  But he still is out there making money selling stuff and he's doesn't seem to be slowing down. I think, how old is he now? Seventy, what?

• 49:47Josh Clark?

  Three, I think.

• 49:48Speaker 04

  Seventy nine years old.

• 49:50Josh Clark?

  Seventy nine. That was pretty close. Give or take six years.

• 49:53Speaker 04

  But he's still trying to market himself and his toy company. I think it was a little dismissive of the movie. Like everybody who's ever had a movie made about themselves, they always say, like, yeah, 10% of that thing is true. But I think they also secretly kind of like that they've made a movie about them.

• 50:09Josh Clark?

  Sure, sure.

• 50:10Speaker 04

  That kind of thing.

• 50:11Josh Clark?

  Right. For sure. There's that also that secondary market Chuck is still around and people are trading on that that myth that some people still have that Beanie Babies are really valuable. And so if you go onto eBay and start searching Beanie Babies, you'll find some for like a dollar, some I think for less than a dollar. And then you can turn around and find the exact same ones for sale for $25,000 or $60,000 or something like that. And I was reading a, I think, tie collector.com article where they were basically saying, like, we're pretty sure this is either money laundering that's going on, or it's some sort of scam where these people are trying to beef up like the, the market value of

• 50:55Josh Clark?

  these things or the secondary market artificially, or it's just a straight up scam where like you, you pay them or they buy from you and say, oh, I overpaid, pay me back in a gift card, which is another thing. In addition to selling at the height of a bubble, never do business with somebody who demands to be paid in gift cards. Something fishy is going on right there. That's my other word of advice around this Christmas time.

• 51:22Speaker 04

  Yeah, this is not like a babysitter or something.

• 51:25Josh Clark?

  Yeah, even still, I'd be like, what's your, what's your angle babysitter?

• 51:30Speaker 04

  The one thing that cracked me up, though, was that when the movie came out and he kinda, which was just recently, I think this summer, or last summer or whatever, he said, you know, I really wanted, I would have preferred somebody like Warren Beatty or Daniel Day-Lewis to have played me.

• 51:45Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 51:46Speaker 04

  I'm like, when this was going on, he was in his 40s, Warren Beatty is 89 years old.

• 51:51Josh Clark?

  Yeah. He's aged.

• 51:53Speaker 04

  Daniel Day-Lewis is 66. They're not even close in age. He's 26, 23 years younger than Warren Beatty. Like, this guy's all over the place.

• 52:00Josh Clark?

  Well, his thing with Daniel Day-Lewis is that he really did beat somebody to death with a bowling pin once, so he thought Daniel Day-Lewis could really bring that to life on screen like he did, and there will be blood.

• 52:11Speaker 04

  Oh, boy.

• 52:12Josh Clark?

  You got anything else?

• 52:14Speaker 04

  I got nothing else.

• 52:15Josh Clark?

  Have you forgotten all the mean things I've said to you this episode?

• 52:19Speaker 04

  I don't even know what you're talking about.

• 52:20Josh Clark?

  Great. Well, since Chuck doesn't know what I'm talking about, everybody, that means that it's time for Listener Mail.

• 52:27Speaker 04

  You know, we're gonna forego Listener Mail this week. It's late in the air, and we would just like to remind everybody, we're gonna say our official Christmas greetings on our Christmas episode, but we've got some great live shows coming up. Next year, we're doing our Pacific Northwest swing, and as we do every year, and see, almost every year, in Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco at Sketch Fest. And we went to some bigger theaters this time, in Seattle especially, so we would love to see everybody and for you to fill those places up. Start 2024 off right. Just go to our website, stuffyoushouldknow.com, and click on the tour page and buy tickets from legitimate sources. Please do not go

• 53:09Speaker 04

  to scalper sites. You might think it's the real site, but if the tickets are more than like 40 bucks or something, then it's not a real site.

• 53:16Josh Clark?

  Or if they want to be paid in gift cards, not a real ticket seller.

• 53:21Speaker 04

  That's right. But we hope to see everybody in January, late January.

• 53:25Josh Clark?

  Sure, absolutely. And in the meantime, everybody, if you want to get in touch with us, you can send us an email. Send it off to [email protected].

• 53:37Speaker 03

  Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 53:53Josh Clark?

  Buy smart, drive for less and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability. And it starts with a great deal on an off-road-ready Tacoma or half-ton Tundra, two of Toyota's longest-lasting trucks, combining power for work, tech for adventures, and style in between. And they're built on a reputation for quality and reliability, which is why Toyota trucks are known for holding their value, which could mean big savings when it's time for your next Toyota. So get a great deal today and a great value tomorrow. Shop toyota.com for more. Toyota, let's go places.

• 54:24Speaker 03

  She's been thinking about this sleepover all week, but I think about her food allergies all the time. Fortunately, her doctor prescribed Zolair, omalizumab. It's proven to significantly reduce allergic reactions if a food allergy accident happens.

• 54:37Speaker 05

  Zolir 150mg is a prescription medication used to treat food allergy in people one year of age and older to reduce allergic reactions due to accidental exposure to one or more foods. While taking Zolir, you should continue to avoid all foods to which you are allergic. Don't use if you are allergic to Zolir. Zolir may cause a severe, life-threatening allergic reaction called anaphylaxis. Tell your doctor if you ever had anaphylaxis. Get help right away if you have trouble breathing or if you have swelling of your throat or tongue. Zolir should not be used for the emergency treatment of allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis. Zolir is for maintenance use to reduce allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis, while avoiding food allergens. Serious side effects such as cancer, fever, muscle aches and rash, parasitic infection, or heart and circulation problems have been reported. Please see zolir.com for full prescribing information. Ask an allergist about Zolir. This is an advertisement for Zolir,

• 55:21Speaker 05

  paid for by Genentech and Novartis.

• 55:24Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.